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THE MICROCOSM 



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THE MICROCOSM 



A P E M 



Read before the Mebical Society of New Jersey at its 

Centenary^ Anniversary : with the Address 

Delivered as President, Jan. 2i, 1866, 



/ 

ABRAHAM COLES, M . D 



''EnoiP Thyself.'' 



a 



NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
18G6. 




rCi 






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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the vear 1S66, by 

ABRAHAM COLES, M.D., 

in the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the District of 
Xew Jersev. 



3 s~J 



L^ 



Newark Daily Advertiser Piint. 



" What a piece of work is Man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in 
faculties ! in form and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how 
lilie an angel ! in apprehension, how like a God !"-Shakespeare. 

" I esteem myself as composing a solemn hymn to the Author of our 
bodily frame, and in this I think there is more true piety than in sacrificing 
to Him hecatombs of oxen, or burnt ofierings of the most costly perfumes'] 
for I first endeavor to know Him myself, and afterwards to show Him to 
others, to inform them how great is His wisdom, His virtue, His good- 
ness." — Galen. 

" I will praise Thee ; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."-DAviD. 




PREFACE. 




HE follo"wiDg Ad(li"css and Poem were delivered 
before tlie Medical Society of New Jersey at its 
recent Centennial Meeting, and published with 
its Transactions. Prej^ared amid the huny and distractions ot 
other duties, and with special reference to the demands and lim- 
itations of the occasion, the Poem, as originally delivered, fell 
short of the author's design, which was to produce, if i)ossi- 
ble, a tolerably complete compendium of that noblest, mo»e 
necessaiy, and yet, strange to say, that most neglected of 
all the Sciences — Anthropology — relieved of some of the 
dryness belonging to the ordinary modes of presentation. 

The hope of supplying in some measui'e existing deficiencies, 
led the author, after the manuscript had j)assed into the 
hands of the printer, to avail himself of the short intervals 
which transpired between the receiving and returning of the 



2 PREFACE. 

proofs, to castigate some parts, and expand others not suffi- 
ciently developed, so tliat liesides alterations there have been 
additions to the amount of two hundred lines and more since 
that fii-st reading. He regrets that the hurry of the press 
joined to the hurry arising from other causes, aflfo^ed so little 
opporttmity for putting in practice the sound inculcation of 
Horace, concerning the duty of delay and careful finish : Um<s 
labor et mora. "With more time at his disposal, he thinks he 
could have done l:>ettcr justice to the fine capabilities of a 
subject, which the writers of verse, ransacking heaven and 
earth for a theme, have hitherto for the most part strangely 
overlooked. This remarkable omission is the more to be won- 
dered at, because many of our best j^oets have been physi- 
cians ; and for some reason dr other 

'• the wise of ancient days adored 
One power of Physic, 3Ielody and Song." 

Dr. Ai"mstrong"s well-kno^Ti Poem in four books, written in 
blank verse, and first published in IT-l-i. entitled, -The Art 
of Preserving Health," does, indeed, treat partially and inciden- 
tally of physiological matters, and may therefore be regarded 
as forming in some sort an exception to the general rule of 
neglect affirmed above. It has for its topics — ^Air. Diet. Exer- 
cise and the Passions — discussed of course, in conformity with 



PREFACE. 3 

the design of the Poem, accortliiig to their sanitary bearings, 
each forming the subject of a separate book. The work was 
everywhere read and admired ; and remains to this day, ac- 
cording to the poet Campbell, "the most successful attempt 
in our language to incorporate material science with poetry." 
While the critic admits that "the practical maxims of science, 
which the Muse has stamped with imagery, and attuned to 
harmony, have so far an advantage over those delivered in 
2)rose, that they become more agreeable and jjermanent acqui- 
sitions of the memory," he, in common with others, seems to 
think, that there inhere in such subjects, nevertheless, difficul- 
ties of a most formidable kind, a perversity and stubbornness 
of nature, which are never overcome except by some rare fe- 
licity of fortune or surjjrising exertion of genius. Hence he 
says : " the author's Muse might be said to show a professional 
intrepidity in choosing her subject ; and, like the physician, 
to prolong the simile, she escaped on the whole with little 
injury. * * * 'Wliat is explained of the animal economy 
is obscured by no i)edantic jargon, but made distinct and to 
a certain degree i^icturesque to the conception." So too in 
his final summing up of the merits of the Poet, he does not 
fail to emphasize that special one, due "to the hand which 
has reared poetical flowers on the dry and difficult ground of 
philosophy." 



4 PBEFACE. 

But there is anotlier and mueli older example of tliis mor- 
ganatic marriage, as some might call it, Ijetwccu poetry and 
natural science — one antedating the Christian era and the 
time of Virgil. Lucretius, liorn in the year before Christ 95, 
composed a Latin poem in heroic hexameters, entitled Be 
Reruni Natura. It is divided into six books; and is based on 
the doctrines of Epicurus, who taught that the world was 
formed from a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 

The lirst two l)ooks expound the nature and properties of 
these ultimate atoms or seeds of things, varying in shape and 
infinite in number, moving in void space infinite in extent, 
with great swiftness, some in right lines, others declining there- 
from, until united to each other after innumerable tentative 
contacts, all the objects in the universe are generated — which 
objects form the sulyect matter of the remaining four books. 

The third book is taken up with a description of the mind 
(animus) and soul (anima) maintaining that both are corporeal, 
acting on the body by material impact ; that the substance of 
the mind and soul is not simple, but composed of four subtle 
elements — heat, vapor, air, and a nameless fourth substance on 
which sensibility depends, and is, so to speak, the soul of the 
soul ; that the soul cannot be separated from the Ijody with- 
out destruction to both, and that death is the end of man. 



PREFACE. 5 

The fourth book treats of the senses, aven-ing that images* of 
exquisite subtlety are constantly emitted (shed, peeled off as 
it were) from the surface of objects, which flying everywhere 
and impinging on the organs of sight produce vision ; that 
voice and sound are corporeal images, (as proved by their 
aljrading the throat after long or loud speaking,) which strike 
the ear and produce hearing. Taste and odors arc ac- 
counted for; and imagination and thought traced to im- 
ages which penetrate the body tlu-ough the senses. Sleej) is 
next spoken of, and the various causes of dreams — the Ijook 
closing Avith a discourse on love and matters pertaining 
thereto. 

The fifth book treats of the origin of the world — land, sea, 
sky, sun, stars, the movements of the heavens, the changes 
of the seasons and the progress of man, society, institutions 
and sciences — while the sixth book, being the last, at- 
tempts an explanation of the most striking natural ap- 
pearances, such as lightning, thunder, clouds, rainl^ow, 
snow, wind, hail, earthquakes and volcanoes, concluding with 



* Democritus first, Epicvinis aftenvarcls called these ndula koL tvttovc, 
i. e. eidola and types ; Cicero, images ; Quintilian, figures ; Catius, spectres ; 
Lucretius, effigies, images, simulacra, species, figures, exuvire, spoils, quasi 
membranes, cortices, &c. Epicurus and Lucretius supposed spectres of the 
dead to be pellicles thrown off from corpses which were so thin as to pass 
through coffins and all other obstructions. 



6 PREFA CE. 

a discourse on diseases, auil a learned and elegant description 
of a pest ^vliicU in the time of the Peloponncsian war desolated 
Athens. 

The philosophy of this celebrated Poem is of course fiilsc 
and absurd, but in regard to its poetical merit there can be 
but one oinnion. The jioct's master}- over his materials is 
complete. Under his magic touch, speculations the most ab- 
struse and technicalities the most refractory, lose their intrac- 
tableness, and are converted into forms of exquisite beauty 
and grace. Great, undoubtedly, arc the attractions of a virgin 
theme. It added to the rapture of Milton, "soaring in the 
high reason of liis fancy with his garland and singing robes 
about him," the knowledge that he pursued 

" Things uiiattcmpted yet iu prose or rhyme." 
So Lucretius, iu the opening lines of the fourth book, does 
not conceal his satisfaction that he is first in the field : 

" Avia Pieridnm peragro loca, millius ante 
Trita solo : jurat integros adcedere funteis 
Atque haurire ; juvatque uovos deccrpere flores, 
Insigaemquc meo capiti petere inde coronam, 
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musoe."* 



* The Muses' pathless places I explore 
Worn hy the sole of no one's foot before : 
'Tis sweet to untouched fountains to repair 
And drink ; 'tis sweet to pluck new flowers ; and there 
To seek a famous chaplet for my brow 
Wlience have the Muses veiled no head till now. 
The literalness of this translation must atone for its lack of elegance. 



PREFACE. 7 

The author of the Microcosm, enjoying, in common with 
these great masters of song, the felicity of a suljject unprofaned 
by previous handling, regrets that he does not possess their 
power to do it justice. He thinks it strange — that while 
amid the ignorances and the vanities of a false jihilosophy two 
thousand years ago, the poet's heart, instinctively discerning 
the excellent beauty there is in God's works, vems imlcliritucli- 
nes rerum, was stirred to sing, and in such a manner as to 
charm the ear of the world 

' Principio coelum ac terras, camposquc liqueutes, 
Luccntemque globum lima?, titaniaque astra 
Spiritns intus alit ; totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem ct magno se corpora miscet" — 

no one has been found in these last days, after so long wait- 
ing, sufficiently kindled and inspired by the exciting discove- 
ries and revelations of modem science, to undertake the task 
of lifting them into the sphere of poetry, and glorifying them 
with its light. If there is nothing so mean l)ut it has a divine 
side — if materials for poetry be not wanting in the most com- 
mon things, a floating cloud, a spear of grass, or a handful of 
dust even — how much more may this be said of so lofty a 
subject as Man, "the mirror of the power of God" reflecting 
His Maker's image in every part, in the minutest Iflood-disk 
and elementary cell, no less than in the complex whole of his 



8 PREFACE. 

most wonderful organism! In short, if it Ijc the proper busi- 
ness of Poetry to deal with suljjects of human interest, what 
can be more human than humanity itself? Or if its 
high aim be to discover throughout creation the dazzling to- 
kens of the Beautiful, the rd icakov^ which is only another name 
for the Divine, where else in all the universe do the shining- 
footprints of the First Good and the First Fair appear so ra- 
diant or so recent as in His last and crowning work, the Hu- 
man Form ? The failure of the i:)resent attempt to show it, 
would prove nothing against the grand poetic possibilities of 
sucli a theme. Still it would be true 

" How charming is divine philosopliy ? 
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of ncctared sweets 
Where no crude surfeit reigns." 




ADDRESS 




I HE Medical Society of New Jersey, hoary with 
the frosts of a hundi-ed winters, and mindful 
of its jusf honors as the oldest organization of 
the kind on the Continent, has here met in a place not far 
from the spot where it was first cradled, to celebrate by special 
and festal observances, this its first Centenary Anniversary. 

It certainly affords remarkable proof of original vigor, and 
reflects infinite credit upon its earlier and later membership, 
that, except for a brief space during the Revolutionary War, 
the Society has never failed to hold regular meetings. In the 
midst of a thousand changes, the throes of revolution, and 
the faU of empires, it has stood unmoved. Nations have been 
bom since it came into being. It is older than the Republic. 
At the time of its formation, its founders were living under 
British rule, not dreaming of revolt. If they shared in the 
pojjular ferment caused by the passage of the odious Stamp 
Act by Parliament a few months before, they probably had no 
expectation of seeing matters pushed to the point of open 
rupture, and forcible separation from the mother country. 
8 



iO ADDRESS. 

The first stone of the Temple erected to Freedom had not 
yet been laid. The Society was some years old when the first 
blow for Independence was struck. Lexington and Concord, 

"Where once the embattled farmers Btood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world," 

were insignificant villages unknown to fame. The brain that 
conceived the Declaration of Independence was probably re- 
volving far other ideas. On the dazzled mind of no seer or 
statesman had dawned the unparalled splendors of the Nation 
that was to be — the constellar glories of that Imperial Com- 
monwealth, composed of a resplendent Sisterhood of States, 
mighty and jjoijuIous and ever increasing, joined indissolubly 
together so as to form one vital organic whole, E pliiribus 
Union, such as is witnessed to-day. 

Those fourteen physicians and surgeons, (let their names be 
always mentioned with honor,) who, foremost in an enlighten- 
ed appreciation of the advantages accruing to science and 
humanity from such an organization, on the 23d of July, A.D. 
1766, laid the foundations of this Society — ^have long since 
passed away. " After they had served their own generation 
by the will of God they fell on sleep, and were laid unto their 
fathers." How inspiring the vision, could they have been 
permitted to penetrate the future and foresee all that has since 
happened ; the mighty changes which have taken place ; the 
struggles and triumijhs by means of whicli this divinely fa- 
vored and foreordained Nation has been gloriously earned 
fcwward to the culminating felicity of the present time, when 



ADDRESS. 11 

Peace once more smiles througli all the land — a glad and 
righteous Peace — and Slavery, its deadliest foe, the inextin- 
guishable cause of strife and hatred, ever at work to mar 

"The unity and married cahu of States," 

has, albeit at an immense cost of treasure and blood, by a 
perpetual and unalterable constitutional enactment, been ban- 
ished and driven out of every part of the national domain. 
IIow amazing the contrast between now and then ! Then there 
were no railroads, no steamships, no telegraphs, no Hoe's 
lightning printing jiresses, no photography, no chloroform. 
In like manner who can tell what new and startling discove- 
ries will be made in the centuries to come. Methinks 

" it were a pleasant thing 

To fall asleep with all one's friends, 
"To pass with all our social ties, 

To silence from the paths of men, 
And every hundred years to rise 

And learn the world, and sleep again, 
To sleep through terms of mighty wars. 

And wake on science grown to more. 
On secrets of the brain, the stars, 

As wild as aught of fairy lore, 
And all that else the years will show, 

The Poet-forms of stronger hours. 
The vast Republics that may grow, 

The Federations and the Powers. 

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep. 
Through sunny decades new and strange, 

Or gay quinquenniads, would we reap 
The flower and quintessence of change." 



13 ADDRESS. 

Members of the Society ! called to address you in the char- 
acter of President on an occasion so extraordinary, I can say 
with all sincerity, that however grateful it may be to my feel- 
ings to be the recipient of so distinguished an honor, the 
gratification is largely tempered with the fear that I may not 
be able to justify the partiality of your selection. My mis- 
givings, I confess, are greater, because of my having ventured 
upon untrodden paths, and attempted the novelty of a poetical 
excursion into the arduous fields of human physiology, where 
few flowers are supposed to bloom. The poetical form, how- 
ever, may fairly claim this advantage in justification of its 
adoption, that it allows a more fervid expression of those 
feelings of devout awe and amazement which the study of the 
wonders of the human economy is so well fitted to excite. 

I offer no apology for mixing ujj my Religion >\-ith my 
Science ; and make no concealment of the fact, but glory in 
avowing it, that these are Christian, both one and the other. 
Nor do I regard it as a just matter of reproach that I make 
my creed so dominant and positive. Believing firmly tluat the 
Christ that redeemed me is the God that made me ; not know- 
ing nor desiring to know any other God but Him, I am ac- 
customed to make Him an essential jjart of all knowledge, 
discover Him in every discovery of Science, and count all 
truth dead until He vitalizes it. Any Science of Life, which 
is not based on the recognition of the fact that "in Him vre 
live and move and have our being," I reckon essentially de- 
fective. 



ADDRESS. 13 

A Physiology which has to do with decomposing coq^ses, 
rather than living men and women ; that puts these into re- 
torts and distils them ; or peeps and peers at the minutest 
shreds and specks of dead tissue through a microscope, and 
determines a cell to be the ultimate fact of structure, however 
true, has no right, I conceive, to be supercilious towards those, 
who, without rejecting what is thus discovered, find room for 
other things, things that pertain to the sj)iritual side of hu- 
manity, the indubitable facts of consciousness, a soul that soars 
and delights in freedom, and is not so in love with smallness, 
as ^\'illingly to be cooped up forever into so minute and mi- 
croscopic a circle, corresponding to a cypher, the symbol of 
nothingness, to which indeed it closely approximates. So 
that if it comes to pishing and poohing, others, for aught we 
can see, have as good a right to pish and pooh as those who 
arrogate so much, the Sadducees of science, who believe in 
neither angel nor spirit, and are able to find nowhere any- 
thing worthy of worship, in this respect showing themselves 
to be more heathenish than the heathen. 

The great Galen, albeit an unbaptized pagan, who lived 
and wrote in the second century, after reviewing the structure 
of the hand and foot, and their adaptation to their respective 
functions, treats us to the following eloquent outburst of jdIous 
feelmg, breathing a spirit not imworthy of Christianity itself: 
" I esteem myself as composing a solemn hymn to the Author 
of our bodily frame, and in this I think there is more true 
l)iety than in sacrificing to Him hecatombs of oxen, or burnt 



U A3DRE8S. 

offerings of the most costly perfumes, for I first endeavor to 
know Him myself, and afterwards to show Him to others, to 
inform them how great is His wisdom, His virtue, His good- 
ness." 

This noble utterance, so honorable to the head and heart of 
one, who, for 1400 years, ruled fi.-om his um in the great 
schools of medicine throughout the civilized world with an 
authority so absolute, that it was reckoned a crime to ques- 
tion it in the smallest particular — sets forth so truly the design 
I had in view in the following Poem, that I have chosen it as 
a motto, in connection with that other apothegm of Greek 
wisdom, " Know Thyself." I style my Poem, " The ilicRO- 
COSM," and in order that I may be more easily followed in the 
reading of it, I beg to premise an outline of its plan in the 
following 

ANALYSIS. 

The Poem Ijegins with speaking of 3Ian as the Archetyi:)e 
or ideal exemplar of all animals, whose coming was foretold 
in a long series of Geologic prophecies from the creation of the 
paleozoic fishes ; and then passes to notice a remarkable an- 
ticipation of this accepted doctrine of modem science in the 
139th Psalm — Owen, Agassiz and other great lights of Com- 
parative and Philosophical Anatomy agreeing in this — that 
while man was the last made he was the first planned of all 
animals — it being easy to trace even in the fins of the fish, a 
marked resemblance in structure to the bones composing the 
human arms of which thev are homoloErucs — fins, in other 



ADDRESS. 16 

words, being imperfect arms, arms in their most rudimentary- 
condition. 

In speaking of the supreme dignity of the human form, 
viewed as a whole, and of man existing in God as well as of 
God, occasion is taken to animadvert upon the atheistic ten- 
dency of certain materialistic teachings. After which the 
component j^arts of the Human Body are taken up in detail, 
beginning with — I. the Skin, as its outermost covering and 
face, (expressing the passions, «fcc.,) composed of three layers. 
Below the Skin lie — II. the Muscles, the Organs of Mo- 
tion, du-ected by the Will, acting through nervous chan- 
nels of communication with — III. the Bkain, as the Com- 
mon Sensory, and seat of this, and the other Faculties of the 
Mind, such as the Understanding, the Religious Sense, Mem- 
ory, Imagination and Conscience. A secretory function is 
attributed to the great Ganglions of the Brain (the Gray 
Sul:)stance) of a hypothetical Nervous Fluid which fills the 
whole body. 

The Mind being dependent for its perceiving power on the 
Organs of the Senses, leads to a consideration of — IV. the Eye 
in its relation to Light, also to Tears and Sleep. After 
glancing at the analagous relations subsisting between the 
Soul and Truth, mention is made of the Founders of Asy- 
lums for the Blind ; also of Asylums for the Deaf and 
Dumb. Next comes — V. the Ear in its relations to Sound 
and Music ; and then by a natural transition — VI. the Hu- 
man VciCE, as being the most perfect of musical instru- 



16 ABDEESS. * 

ments. The Mouth and Xose, being concerned in Articula- 
tion, brings up— 'STI. Taste, and — YIIL Smell. The final 
cause of Taste being the repair of the "Waste the body is 
constantly undergoing, there follows a description of — IX. In- 
gestion, Digestion and Assimilation. The Chyle received 
into the Blood is conveyed to the right side of the Heart, 
-n-hich, besides being the grand Organ of— X. the CiKcrxATiON 
and indirectly of KtH-RmoN, is the reputed seat of— XI. the 
Affections, and stands in general speech as a synonym of 
LoTE under its manifold manifestations. 

Having noticed the coloring or modifying power of the 
Viscera in giving Love its distinctive character, as exempli- 
fied in Maternal Love and the Love of the Sexes, occasion 
is taken to speak of — XU. "Woman, as distinguished from Man. 
Of Charity, which is Love in action, or Love viewed in its 
practical aspect, an apt illustration is found in the devotion 
and self-denying labors of — XHT. the Conscientious Physician. 
Reference is made to — XIV. Christ as the Great Physician of 
Souls; and while contemplating Death in that aspect of 
brightness which it bears to the believer, allusion is made to 
the recent depai-ture of a venerable member of the Society, 
Dr. L. A. Smith. The Poem concludes with — XY. a triumph- 
ant anticipation of the Resurrection, when the dead in Christ 
shall rise with new bodies made like unto His orlorious Bodv, 



THE MICROCOSM, 



V fu!) I a eavTO V . 



GEOLOGIC PEOPHECV OF MAN'S COMING. 

OWHAT a solemn and divine delight 
To i)ierce the darkness of primeval night — 
Through countless generations upward climb 
To the first ei^ochs of beginning time : 
Back, through the solitude of ages gone, 
To the dim twilight of Creation's dawn ; 
To the di'ead genesis of heaven and earth. 
When pregnant Deity gave Nature birth ; 
Borne on swift pinions, till our feet we place 
Upon the undermost granitic base 
Of the round world ; and, awe-struck, standing there, 

Where all is lifeless, desolate and bare, 
3 



18 THE JllCHOCOSJf. 

Behold the forming of earth's upper crust, 
Built up of atoms of ouce living dust ; 
Layer on layer rising, rock on rock. 
Through lapse of years that numeration mock ; 
"VThere lie, in stony sepulchres forgot. 
Gigantic organisms that now are not ; 
And all the various forms of life prevail, 
From low to high, in an ascending scale, 
Mollusk and fish, then reptile and then bii'd, 
So on to mammal, each o"er each interred — 
All pointing forward, in the eternal plan. 
To the ideal, archetypal MAX I 

SCBIPTCKAI, AXTICrPATIOX OF TltK DOCTBCTE. 

How oft. what's plain and patent in the Word. 
Is by slow Science, paiufally inferred ! 
The truth she took long centuries to unfold. 
Had she Imt known it, was already told. 
See, with what ease the Psalmist now unlocks 
The secret of the paleozoic rocks: 



THE MICROCOSM. 19 

Inspiring iusiglit given him, to see 

The di-ift and meaning of the mysteiy ; 

His, the discoveries of modem l)oast, 

By revehition of the Holy Ghost : 

In correspondence, literally exact 

With geologic inference and fact, 

O'erwhelmed Avith fear and wonder, liear him speak :* 

"O Omnipresent One! in vain I seek 
To Iiound Thy being, get beyond Thee, go 
Wliere Thou, the Infinite, art not, Oh, no ! 
If I ascend to heaven, I find Thee ; or in hell 
I make my bed, I find Thee thei'e, as well : 
There is no hiding place from Thee ; yea, in the dark 
Thou seest me, nor need'st the sun — that spark 
Which the insufterable sj^lendor of Thine eye 
Did kindle — to reveal me or descry : 
Thou hast possessed my reins ; didst give me room, 
Growth and develoi)ment in my mother's womb : 
My substance was not hid from Thee, when I 
* Ptialm cxxxix. 



•20 THE JtTICROCOSM. 

AV:iji niaile in secivt. and Avas curiously 

In the earths lowest parts and strata wrought : 

My perfect whok\ was present to Thy thought 

While yet imperfect ; and, in Xature's book, 

3Iy members were prefigured ; each thing took 

My embryonic likeness ; fish's fin. 

By virtue of relationship and kin. 

Predicted me ; ages before I came. 

The Ichthyosaurus prophesied the same ; 

Entrails of beast, and wing of bird, supplied 

Aruspicy and augury, nor lied. 

Thy works, how marvellous I Thy hands began. 

And fashioned me continually, to make me man : 

In all the grand ascent of Xature's stair, 

O unforgetting God I Fve been Thy care : 

How precious are Thy thoughts to me — their count 

Is as the sand, an infinite amount I" 

GKSIEKii TTBW— XAX SrPKE3CE. 

thou, made up of every creature's best ! 
The summing up and monarch of the rest '. 



THE MICROCOSM. ■ 31 

Thy liigli-raiscd cranium, vaulted to contain 

The big and billowy and powerful brain ; 

While that a scanty thimbleful, no more, 

Belongs to such as swim or creep or soar ; 

Thy form columnar, sky-ward looking face,* 

Majestic mien, intelligence and grace ; 

Thy foot's firm tread, and gesture of thy hand — 

Proclaim thee ruler, destined to command. 

A little lower than the angels made. 

Dominion, glory, worship on thee laid, 

I praise not thee, but honor and applaud 

The handiwork and mastcrj^iecc of God : 

Fearful and wonderful, and all divine. 

Where two worlds mingle, and two lives coml;inc, 

A dual body, and a dual soul, 

Touching eternity at either pole : 

The tides of being, circling swift or slow, 

'Tween mystic banks that ever ovei-flow, 



• "Pronaque cum spectant animalia csetera terram, 
Os homini sublime dedit : coelumque videre 
Jussit, et crcctos ad sidera tollere vultus."— Oric?. 



THE MICROCOSM. 

E^iist not severed from the Fountain head, 
But Avlioneo they rise, eternally are ted : 
Our springs are all iu God; from Him avc drink, 
Live, move, and have our being, feel and think. 

CHKISTI.O; SCIEKGE. 

I value Seience— none can prize it more — 
It gives ten thousand motives to adore : 
Be it religious, as it ought to be. 
The heart it humbles, and it bows the knee : 
What time it lays the l>reast of Xature bare, 
Discerns God's lingei-s working everywhere ; 
In the vast sweep of all embracing laws, 
Finds Ilim the real and the only Cause ; 
And, in the light of clearest evidence, 
Perceives Ilim acting iu the present tense ; — 
Not as some claim, once acting but now not, 
The glorious product of His hands forgot — 
Having wound up the grand automaton, 
Leaviuij it. henceforth, to itself to run. 



TR E MI CBOCO SM. 



njFIDEL SCIENCE. 



If I mistake not, 'tis in this consista 
The common folly of the specialists. 
Bigots of sense, they, with unwearied pains, 
Searching for soul, find something they call brains : 
Happy the mystery of life to tell, 
By help of glasses, they announce a cell : 
And thereupon they would the world persuade 
They know exactly how that man is made : 
'Tween nought and nought, his origin and end, 
A cell is all, and all on this depend : 
They pare his being, make it kss and less, 
Until they reach the goal of nothingness. 
Their boasted methods failing to find out 
The sours high essence, they affect to doubt : 
To their own notions obstinately wed, 
They vainly seek the living 'mong the dead- 
By learning mad, these noodles of the schools 
Are but a kind of higher class of fools. 

Who follows matter through its countless, shapes, 



34 THE MICROCOSM. 

Wliile still it vanishes and still escapes ; 
O'er eagerly pursues the Hying feet 
Of natural causes farther than is meet. 
Losing- all trace, and tlrawing thence too near, 
Into the bottomless obscure falls sheer : 
With atheistic cant, then God ignores. 
And turns the Maker fairly out of doors: 
Deems certainties of consciousness weigh less 
Than the presumptions of a learned guess. 

COILMON SENSE. 

Presumptuous though it be. I, with a calm 
Audacity of fiith, believe I am : 
Nor venture with a Maker to dispense, 
But trust the sanities of Common Sense : 
Hold life, despite of failure to extract. 
A thing of firm reality and fact : 
Accept the truth, engraven on my heart, 
I have a spiritual and immortal part. 
If this great univci-se is a deceit, 
I am not able to detect the cheat ; 



TEE 31IGB0C0SM. 25 

Nor dare I tell the Author of the Skies 
That He has built on rottenness and lies. 

INVOCATION. 

Dear God ! this Body, which, with wondi'ous art, 
Thou hast contrived, and finished part by part. 
Itself a universe, a lesser all. 
The greater cosmos crowded in the small — 
I kneel before it, as a thing divine ; 
For such as this, did actually enshrine 
Thy gracious Godhead once, wdien Thou didst make 
Thyself incarnate, for my sinful sake. 
Thou who hast done so veiy much for me, 

let me do some humble thing for Thee ! 

1 would to eveiy Organ give a tongue, 
That Thy high praises may be fitly sung ; 
Appropriate ministries assign to each, 
The least make vocal, eloquent to teach. 

FLESH OAEMENT— SKIN, ITS MOEAL CHAEACTEK. 

How beautiful, and delicate, and fresh, 

Appear the Soul's Habiliments of Flesh I 
4 



36 THE MICROCOSM. 

How closely fitting, easj- yet, and broad, 
Each Tissue woven in the loom of God ! 
Comparetl with tliat magniticcnce of drees, 
Wherewith is clothed the Si)irit"s nakedness, 
O how contemptible and mean a thing, 
The purple and line linen of a king ! 

The spotless vesture of the silky Skin, 
Outside of all, and covering all within, 
"With what a marvellous and matchless grace, 
Is it disposed and moulded to each place ; 
Bounding and beautifying brow and breast, 
A crowning loveliness to all the rest ! 
Endowed Avith wondrous properties of soul 
That interpenetrate and fill the whole ; 
A raiment, moral, maidenly and white, 
Shamed at each breach of decency and right, 
Where dwells a charm above the charms of sense. 
Suggestive of the soul's lost innocence. 



TUE MICROCOSM. 27 



PATnOGKOMT. 



Who has not seen tliat Feeling, Ijorn of flame,* 
Crimson the cheek at mention of a name ? 
The rapturous touch of some divine suq)rise, 
Flash deep suffusion of celestial djes ; 
When hands clasjjed hands, and lips to lips were pressed, 
And the heart's secret was at once confessed i 

Lo, that young mother, when her infant first 
Gropes for the fountain whence to quencli its thirst ; 
With outstretched tinj^ hands, to eager li23s 
Conveys the nij^i^le, and the nectar sips ; — 
As on lier j-eaniing breast, she feels the warm 
Delicious clasp of its embracing arm, 
How thrills the bosom, and how streams the wine I 
IIow her frame trembles with a Joy divine ! 

Not Joy, not Love alone here take their rise, 
The chosen seat of mighty sympathies — 
Electric with all life, Religious Awe, 
Here holds its empire and asserts its law. 
At dead of night wlien deep sleep falls on men, 
Aristotle calls Love, ^^tl Oepjibv Trpdyna^—a certain fiery thing. 



38 THE MICROCOSM. 

Terror and trinnMino- camo upon me;— tlicn 
A spirit passed before my face : the hair 
Stood up upon my shuddering tiesli — and there 
Was silence — all my bones did shake — 
A voice the preternatural stillness brake : 
"Shall mortal man, avIioso origin is dust. 
Arraign his ^[aker, claim to be more just?"' 

Contending Passions jostle and displace 
And tilt and tourney mostly in the Face; 
Phantasmagoric shapes appear and pass. 
Distinctly ]nctured in that magic glass; 
Their several natures, instantly imbued 
With the complexion of the changeful mood — 
Ashes of Grief, and jiallor of Afiright, 
Blackness of Rage, and Hatred's wicked white. 
The immortal radiance of Faith and Hope, 
Like that which streamed on Stephen's from the cope — 
The hidden depths of being, stirred below. 
Thoughts, passions, feelings, upward mount for show ; 
Unmatched l>y Art. upon this wondrous scroll 



THE MICRO C0S3I. 39 

Portrayed are all the secrets of the Soul ; 
Upon this palimpsest, writ o'er and o'er, 
Each passing hour is l)usy penning more; 
Events, that make; the histoiy within, 
There puhlished on the surface of the Skin. 

INTEBIOE VIEW— SKIN DISSECTED. 

What lies below this beautiful outside ? 
What proofs of power and wisdom does it hide '. 
To eyes instructed and divinely keen. 
The Shekinah, the Clieruljim between, 
W^as not more visible than the Godhead here, 
Nor spake more audibly to human car. 
For from the centre to this far extreme 
And corporal shore of being. Love supreme 
Its miracles magnificent has wrought. 
Embodying the Maker's perfect thought. 

Would you explore the Mysteries of Life? 
Dissect in fear, use reverently the knife — 
All was made sacred to some holy use, 
Whate'er the profanations of abuse — 



30 THE MICROCOSM. 

Cut not with Muiuleriiio- and careless hand, 
If you the fleshly maze would understand; 
For that the task is difficult, it needs 
The skill and knowledge which experience breeds. 

BLENDING OF CONTKAEIES— STKUCTtTRAL DETAILS. 

Now that the Dermal Covering is cut through, 
And its interior structure brought to view, 
Pause, if you will, and let your aided sight 
Peruse the wonders of Creative Might. 
Admire the skill that can in one combine 
A Sensibility and a Touch so fine — 
j\Iaking the Skin throughout the purjjose serve 
Of one ubiquitous great surface nerve, 
That finest needle, would it entrance gain, 
Must i^ierce the sense and stab the soul with \M\m ; 
Where camping armies of pajiilUr wait, 
Manning each fortress, guarding every gate, 
Armed at all points, and vigilant as fear, 
To sound tir alarm when danger hovers near — 
And yet, despite this nicety of sense, 



THE MICROCOSM. 31 

Formed for coarse uses, and for rough defense : — 
An imbricated Armor, scale on scale,* 
Twelve thousand millions fonn a coat of mail, 
Flexile and fine, or homy else and hard, 
The trembling nakedness of sense to guard : 
A colored Rete delicately spun. 
Quenching the fiery aiTOws of the sun, 
Spreads soft above, and undulating dips 
Between the sentient 2)apillary tips, 
Part of the duplex Corium, beneath 

* The Skin as here described includes : 1. the Cuticle with its innumera- 
ble microscopic tiles specially designed for defence ; 2. the Bete Mucomm, 
the seat of color ; 3. the Corium or Tme Skin, consisting of two non-sep- 
arable layers— the upper, papillary and sensitive, the lower firm and 
fibrous ; 4. Perspiratory tubes, convoluted beneath the true skin, their 
spiral ducts opening obliquely under the scales of the Cuticle, their office 
being to purify and cool the body; 5. Sebaceous Follicles, or OU Glands, 
seated in the substance of the skin, serving to soften and lubricate tl;e 
surface, funiishing likewise, perhaps, G, that Disliroctive Odor peculiar to 
each individual whereby he sows himself on all the winds, and perfumes 
with every footstep the ground over which he passes ; 7. the Hair, im- 
planted by a bulbous root in the fibrous layer of the Corium, which being 
contractile shrinks under the influence of great fear or horror, and as the 
poet says : 

" Makes each particular hair to stand on end 
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine" — 

quills in the porcupine, feathers in the bird, wool and hair in the quadru- 
ped all belonging to the same category. Ilair in mar, not being needed 
for warmth or covering as in the lower lives, is gathered to the head and 
appropriately crowns it. 



83 THE MICROCOSM. 

Forming a continent elastic slieatb, 
Felted and firm and suitable to l^ind, 
Muscle and viscus to the place assigned : 
Where nine full leagues of Tubing buried lie, 
All convoluted opening to the sky, 
Transmitting formed impurities within. 
Through doors and windows of the porous skin ; 
Th' exuding moisture tempering inward flame, 
Cooling the fever of the heated frame : 
Fountlets and Rivulets of Oil below, 
Preserving softness, ever spring and flow ; 
Musk emanations, to the dog defined. 
Snuffing his master on the scented wind ; 
Hair, not for warmth or dress, here sparsely spread. 
Reserved to ornament the regal head. 
Around the brow of Eva thickly curled 
And crowning Adam monarch of the world. 

TOLUHTAET MUSCXES— TIIEIR OFFICE A2JD WOEE. 

Lifting this threefold Yeil, wc find — beneath 
A dense, enclosing, imiversal sheath — * 
* The cuvcloping aponeurosis or fascia binding down the muscles. 



THE MICROCOSM. 33 

The subject Muscles,* girded to fulfil 

The lightning mandates of the sovereign Will, 

Th' abounding means of motion, wherein lurk 

Man's infinite capacity for work ; 

By which, as taste or restless nature bids. 

He rears the Parthenon or Pyramids ; 

In high achievements of the plastic art. 

Fulfils th' ambitious pui-pose of his heart ; 

Creates a grace outrivaling his own, 

Channing all eyes — the poetry of stone : 

Symbols his faith, as in Cathedrals — vast 

Religious petrifactions of the Past : 

Covers the land with cities ; makes all seas 

White with the sails of countless argosies : 

Pushes the ocean Ijack with all her waves. 

And from her haughty SAvay a kingdom saves ; 

* Some authors reckon the number of Muscles in the Human Body as 
high as 527. They have been divided into Voluntary (forming the red 
flesh, or the main bulk of the body ;) Involuntary, such as the heart, fleshy 
fibres of the stomach, &c. ; and Mixed, such as the muscles of respiration, 
&c. Each Muscle is made up of an indefinite number of fibres, which may 
be considered as so many muscles in miniature, along which stream the 
currents of the Will. Yet with all this complex apparatus every thing is in 
harmony. 

5 



U THE M1CR0C0S31 

Tunnels high mountains, Erebus unbars, 
i\aid through it rolls the thunder of his cars : 
With stalwart arm, defends down-trodden right, 
And, like a ■whirlwind, sweeps the field of fight ; 
And when, at last, the war is made to cease, 
. On firm foundations, stablishes a peace ; 

Then barren wastes with nodding harvests sows, 
And makes the desert blossom as the rose. 

MTJSOITLAE DTNAMICS— DIBECTING POWER WHERE? 

Bundles of fleshy fibres without end, 
Along the Ijony Skeleton extend 
In thousand fold directions from fixed points 
To act their several parts upon the Joints ; 
Adjustments nice of means to ends we ti'ace, 
With each dynamic filament in place. 
But whcre's the Hand that grasps the million reins. 
Directs and guides them, quickens or restrains ? 

See the musician, at his fingers' call 
All sweet sounds scatter, fast as rain-th'ops fall ; 
AVitli flying touch, he weaves the web of song, 



THE MICROCOSM. 35 

Rhythmic as rapid, intricate as long. 
"Wlience this precision, delicacy and ease ? 
And Where's the Master that defines the keys ? 
The many jointed Spine, with link and lock 
To make it flexile while secure from shock, 
Is pierced throughout, in order to contain 
The downward prolongation of the brain ; 
From which, Ity double roots, the nerves* arise — 
One Feeling gives, one Motive Power supplies ; 
In opposite directions, side by side, 
With mighty swiftness there two currents glide ; — 
Winged, head and heel, the Mercuries of Senset 



* For the benefit of the general reader, presumably not familiar with 
anatomical details, we may state that there are 43 pairs of nerves in all, 
i. e. 12 Cranial or Encephalic and 32 Spinal. The first have only one root 
in the brain, whilst the latter arise Vjy two roots from the anterior and 
posterior halves of the spinal marrow, but unite immediately afterwards 
to form one nerve. Division of the anterior root causes loss of motion — 
of the posterior the loss of sensation. The first transmit volitions from 
the brain, the latter sensitive impressions to the brain. 

+ Helmholtz has instituted experiments to determine the rapidity of 
transmission of the nervous actions. For sensation the rate of movement 
assigned is one hundred and eighty to three hundred feet per second. 
Muscular contraction, or shortening of the muscular fibre takes place, at 
times, with extreme velocity ; a single thrill, in the letter R, can be pro- 
nounced in the l-30,0fX)th part of a minute. There are insects whose 
wings strike the air thousands of times in a second. The force of contrac- 
tion (Myodynamis) is most remarkable in some of these. In birds, the 
absolute power in proportion to the weight of the body is as 10,000 to 1. 



36 THE MICEOCOSM. 

Mount to the regions of Intelligence ; 
Instant as liglit, the nuncios of the throne 
Command the JMuscles that command the Bone. 

Each morning after slumber, brave and fresh, 
The Moving Army of the Crimson Flesh, 
From fields of former conquests, marching comes 
To the grand beating of unnumbered drums — * 
Each martial Fibre pushing to the van 
To make "I will" the equal of ''I can;" 
Testing the possibilities of power 
In deeds of daring suited to the hour; 
Doing its utmost to build up the health 
And glorj' of the inner Commonwealth. 

Levers and fulcra every where we find. 
But Avhere's the great Archimedean Mind, 
That on some pou STO,t outside and al)ove. 
Plants its firm foot this living world to move ? 

* The heart and arteries. 

t Archimedes used to say, " Give a place where I may stand, (<5o~ "^^ov 
otCS) and I can move the world." 



THE MICROCOSM. 37 

CBAN1I7M— SOUL'S FIEMAIIENT— BKAIN. 

Find it we shall, if anywiiere we can, 
Doubtless, in that high Capitol of man, 
Wliose Spheric Walls, concentric to the cope. 
Were built to match the nature of his Hope. 
What seems the low vault of a narrow tomb. 
Is the SouFs sky, where it has ample room ; 
As apt through this, its crystalline, to pass, 
As though it were diaphanous as glass. 
When Sense is dark, it is not dark, but light, 
Itself a sun. that banishes the night. 
Shedding a morning, beauteous to see, 
On the horizon of Etcmity. 
Strange, a frail link, and manacle of Buain 
So long below suffices to detain 
A principle, so radiant and high. 
So restless, strong, and fitted for the sky. 
mind's organ— citv of the dead. 

Here mounted, standing on the tojimost towers, 
Up to the roof of this high dome of ours, 



88 THE MICROCOSM. 

With the Mind's Organ in our hands, what new 

Secrets of structure strike th' astonished view ? 

A weird, and wonderful, and fragile mass 

Of white and gray* — deserted now, alas ! 

All knowledge quite razed out ; no trace 

Of things which were : now mourns each haj^py place, 

Where frolicked once the Children of the Mind ; — 

Of all the numljcr, not one left behind : 

No vestige of the battle and the strife ; 

None, of tlie conquests that ennobled life. 

Hid is the maze where Doubt was wont to groj)c ; 

Hid the starved fibre of a perished Hope; 



* The Nervous System ever}'where consists of Uvo kinds of tissue — 
While and Gray. The White forms the nerres, the exterior of the spinal 
cord, and the central parts of the brain and cerebellum, (where it is soft, 
like curdled cream, but is firmer in the nerves,) composed everywhere of 
parallel fibres or threads of extreme fineness, which form the Channels of 
nervous power and influence to and from the Ganglionic Centres and 
Sources, both great and small, of this influence, constituting the Gray sub- 
stance found in the central 'pa.vis of the spinal cord, at the base of the brain 
in isolated masses, and the exterior of the cerebrum and cerebellum, where 
to economize space it lies in folds, dipping down into the interior, and 
forming the convolutions. It is found also in the ganglia of the Gieat Sym- 
pathetic. Condensely stated, the gray ganglia originate nervous power, 
the white nervous filaments only transmit it. The Hemispherical Ganglia 
(the plaited or convoluted cortex of the cerebrum) forming about nine- 
tenths of the whole mass of the brain, although entirely destitute of both 
sensibility and excitability, are believed to be on good grounds the special 



THE 3I1CR0C0SM. 39 

Hid the tough sinews of a A\Testling Faith — 

The Christian Athlete matched with Sin and Death : 

Hid all the teeth-prints of the wolves of Grief— 

A savage pack, of which Remorse is chief. 

How strange, of all the wounds our comforts mar, 

Tliat of the fellest we should tind no scar ! 

None can j^oint out where UNDEK8TANDtN"G dwelt : 
None, the high places where Religion knelt : 
The spot where Reaterexce, with feet unshod. 
Came to consult the Oracle of God : 

The crypts and catacomljs, where Memory cast 
The bones of all the dead of all the Past ; 
Shelves, where were stowed all libraries of man, 



Beats, so far as these can be said to have any, of the intellectual faculties — 
memory, reason, judgment and the like. Impressions, convej'ed to the 
Spinal Cord, i. e. its ganglionic centre, are there organically, not intellect- 
ually perceived, and the movements which follow are such as are dicta- 
ted by supreme orgardc wisdom, forming indeed an admirable mimio'y 
of conscious sensation and voluntary action, but mimicry only, for both 
are really absent. This belongs to what is called " reflex action," and 
explains automatic function and phenomena, of which life is full. It is 
not, it is believed, until impressions have reached the ganglion of the 
Tuber Annulare that they are converted into conscious sensations and 
excite voluntary movements. And only when they have mounted to the 
Hemispheres, the ganglia of thought and feeling, that they become the 
property of the intellect and are made the grounds of rational conduct. 



40 THE MICROCOSM. 

All grey traditions, since the world began ; 

All literatures, religious, kinds and parts 

Of knowledge, laws, philosophies and arts ; 

All actions, all articulated breath — 

The Book of Life, and ah ! the Book of Death,— 

Wherein, whatever fatal leaf it turned, 

Its former self the guilty soul discerned. 

Mirrored entire — seen outside and within 

In every form and attitude of sin ; 

Th' inevitable reflection, imaged there, 

True to the life, like pictures of Dagucrre ; 

The very scene, in Avhich each deed was done, 

Painted in all the colors of the sun ; 

So faithful, fresh, time, circumstance and act, 

The past reality seemed present fact — 

There tiehl, and weapon, and the riven brain 

Of Abel smitten by the hand of Cain, 

And blood, with red moist lips, in Pity's ears 

Crying for vengeance through eternal years, 

Th' unwashed crimson of the guilty sod — 



THE MICROCOSM. 41 

As in the eye and memory of God. 

Imagination's skyey scat, Avhere came 

For soaring fliglit the demigods of fame, 

Home of the Muses, fair and forked Mount 

Of high Parnassus, and Castalian Fount, 

Wlience issued streams that watered all the earth, 

Tlien most, when blind Maonides had l)irtli; 

And Zion's holier Hill, and Siloe's Brook, 

Warljling forever, in blind Milton's Ijook ; 

The topmost peak wliere Sliakespeare took his stand, 

And waved his wand of joower o'er sea and land. 

Strange, that so sweet and heavenly a hill. 

Should breed fierce dragons, ravenous beasts of ill, 

"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire," 

Monsters of hideous shapes, with tongues of fire : 

Have rifted rocks whose entrance leads to hell 

And the damned wizard of the mighty spell, — 

Making its precincts all enchanted ground, 

Turning to horror eveiy sight and sound; 

With grisly terrors, straight from Acheron, 
6 



42 THE MICROCOSM. 

Peojiling each nook, and darkening all the sun. 

None can tlic judgment seat of Consciekce show, 
That highest Court and Parliament below, 
Wlicre, sole and sovereign, seated on her throne, 
She recognized th' Infallible alone. 
To her, the keys of heaven and earth were given, 
And what she bound on earth was bound in heaven. 
By tlic clear light, which lier decisions shed. 
Instructed feet in pleasant ways were led. 
Martyrs were pointed to the neighboring sky, 
And Patriots taught how sweet it is to die. 

Where these had their liigh dwelling, we, in vain. 
Seek in this packed and folded pulp of brain : 
Judged, by the ignorant regards of sense, 
IIow mean ! by heights of function, how immense ! 
To reason and the vision of shut eyes 
Its infinite e.xpandings fill the skies. 
Wliat regions of sul;>limity once there ! 
What mountains soaring in the upper air — 



THE MICROCOSM. 48 

Not thunder scarred Acroceraunian* peak 

Alpine or Himalayan loftier than the Greek 

So high so hidden — from whose secret tops 

Keener than needles, trickled the first drops 

Of rising rivers, flowing silently 

Into the cerebral deep drainless sea. 

From which, as from a mighty fountain-head, 

Life's crystal waters everywhere were spread, 

Coursing in liquid lapse through Channels White,t 

Swift as the lightning, stainless as the light, 



* A range of very hish mountains in Greece, (from aapog, extreme, and 
KEQavvoQ, thunderbolt,) eo called because their peaks are often struck by 
lightning. 

+ The Nerves are composed of bundles of minute fibres or filaments, 
averaging 1-2,000 of an inch in diameter. Each filament consists of a 
colorless, transparent, tubular membrane, containing a thick, softish, semi- 
fluid nervous matter which is white and glistening by reflected light. Run- 
ning through the central part is a longitudinal grayish band, called ' the 
axis of the cylinder.' Branches of a nerve are merely separations and 
new directions of some of the filaments of the bundle, these being always 
continuous from their origin to their point of distribution, which prevents 
any confusion arising from a running together of impressions. The ner- 
vous tree, like that of the blood vessels, is so vast, that in its totality, 
exhibited separately, it would give almost an outiine of the human form. 
The circulation of a nervous fluid, though not demonstrable, has been 
hypothetically deduced from the tubular structure of the nen'cs and other 
considerations. Assuming the fact, the whole body may be said to swim 
in this vital sea, having its analogy in that higher or divine animation, 
described as being " filled with the Spirit." 



44 THE MICROCOSM. 

Conveying to oticli atom of the whole 
Volitions, animations, power and soul. 

Once beautiful for situation, gem 
And joy of the whole earth, Jerusalem, 
How sits she solitary ! she that w'as great 
Among the nations, now left desolate ! 
Th' adversary hath sjjread out his hantl 
On all her pleasant things and spoiled the laud: 
Her gates are sunk into the ground : the rent 
And ruined rampart and the wall lament : 
Her palaces arc swallowed up : the Lord 
His altar hath cast otl': He hath aI)hoi-red 
His sanctuary even : luitli overthrown 
And pitied not, nor cared to spare his own. 

EYE, AND ITS COKItELATIVE. 

The ways of Zion mourn ; funereal gloom 
Fills every haljitation like a tomb ; 
Closed is eacli i)ort, and window of the mind ; 
And there is none to look — the Eye is blind. 
How different once, when in that little Sphere, 



THE MICROCOSM. 45 

The glorious universe -was pictured clear! 
O -\vliat an Organ that ! germane to Light, 
"Wliose own relations too, are such to sight, 
'Twere hard to say, the two so nicely ti^, 
Made was the eye for light, or light for it. 
Ne'er were two lovers, separate by space. 
More eager, fond, impatient to embrace. 
Than that sweet splendor — streaming from afui. 
Traveling for ages from some distant star, 
Straight as an arrow speeding from the bow — 
And that clear Eye-ball Avaiting here below. 

LIGHT HAS NO MANIFESTING POWEE WITHOUT THE EYE. 

Prime work of God ! upon the bended knee 
The Avhole creation homage pays to thee : 
From night and chaos countless suns emerge 
That all their beamings may in thee converge ; 
Since wholly vain and useless were, they know. 
Without the Eye to see, their light to show : 
They roll in darkness, quenched their every ray 
Till thy lids opening, change the night to day. 



4& THE MICROCOSM. 

Placed, for commanding and enjoying these, 
In the di'cad centre of immensities, 
The dejjths thou searchest and tlie heights supreme. 
Ranging at will from this to that extreme. 
"Where space is dark to thy unaided sight, 
Thither thou turu'st thy telescope of might. 
And in the heart of the abysmal gloom 
Behold'st celestial gardens all abloom — 
Brave starry blossomings and clusters fine 
Loading the ))ranches of the heavenly vine : 
See'st suns, like dust, lie scattered 'long the road 
That leads to that far Paradise of God. 
From this to yonder, who the leagues can tell ? 
One might compute the ocean's drops as well. 
Turn now : the nether intinite e.\2)lore : 
Extend thy vision, as thou didst before :* 
Pierce downwards, pierce to the concealed minute, 
The ultimates of things, the germ, the root, 
The atom world, so near — and yet so far 
* For example, with a Microscope that magnifles a million times. 



THE MICROCOSM. 47 

Not more remote is the remotest star — 
To forms of life to which, O can it be ? 
A drop of water is a slioroless sea. 
So vast tliy sweep, it surely were not strange 
If eye angelic had no wider range. 
Even so ! On earth or in the realms of air 
Nothing is tair but as thou mak'st it fair- 
In face or flower or iris braided rain, 
Beauty exists not or exists in vain ; 
Without thy power to paint them or perceive 
There were no gorgeous shows of morn and eve. 

IIGHT LOST IN THE ETE EEAPPEAES IN THE CONSCIOTTSNESS. 

How wonderful, that organs made of clay 
Should drink so long th' abundance of the day ! 
Receive the constant unretuming tides 
Of sun and moon and all the stars besides ! 
Not lost is all this mighty wealth of beams : 
Rivers of light, innumerable streams, 
Flow darkling for a space, then spring again 



THE MlCU0C0S3t. 

To join the Aretliusas* of the brain, 
In bliss of married consciousness to lie 
Fountains of l)rightness througli eternitj'. 

TEAES— sleep: ITS BESUSOITATING POWER— ORGANIC LIFE. 

Since man was born to troul)le here below, 
Tears were provided for predestined woe ; 
And tears have fiiUeu in perpetual shower 
From man's apostasy until this hour ; 
But there 's the promise of a future day 
When God's dear hand shall wipe all tears away. 

On eyes that watch as well as eyes that weep 
Descends the solemn mystery of Sleei^. 
Toiling and climbing to the very close. 
The weary Body, longing for rei)ose, 
On the gained level of the day's ascent. 
Halts for the night and pitches there its tent : 
Then, sinking down, is 'gulphed in an abyss 



* The river Alpheus in Elis is fabled to flow under the earth to Sicily, 
and to unite with the fountain Arethusa ; hence Arethusa, a nymph, 
whose lover was Alpheus. 



THE MICROCOSM. 49 

As deep and dark as the abodes of Dis — * 
Rather, returns into the peaceful gloom 
And blank unconsciousness of nature's womb, 
Where jjlastic forces work, to be next morn 
To a new life and niiglitier vigor born ; — 
Prepared to run again Life's upward way 
ScaUng the misty summits of To-Day : 
Lo ! height o'er height, through all the years, they rise, 
Supplying steps by which to mount the skies, — 
Ladder, like Jacob's, heavenly, complete, 
Wliose radiant rounds were tor angelic feet. 
From night's dark caves spring evermore, in truth, 
Fountains of freshness and perpetual youth : 
This seeming death, with consciousness at strife, 
Is health and happiness and length of life. 
There is within, that which preserves and keeps — 
Organic Providence that never sleeps :— 
When the slack hand of Reason drops the rein, 
This drives the chariots of the heart and brain, 
♦ Domos Ditis. 



50 THE MICROCOSM. 

Wei-c life's fall g<)l)lc;t trusted to the Will, 
Its nerveless hand would soon its contents spill ; 
The Maker so was careful to provide 
Another principle and power beside, 
Archeus,* Instinct — any name may serve — 
Organic Life, Great Sympathetic Nerve,t 
With Cerebellum,:]; competent to save, 



* The Archaius, according to Van Ilclmout is an immaterial principle, 
existing from the beginning (apA''/) and presiding over the development of 
the body and over all organic phenomena. Besides this chief one, which 
he located in the npper orifice of the stomach, he admitted several subordi- 
nates, one for each organ, each of them being liable to auger, caprice, ter- 
ror, and every human feeling. 

t The Great Sympathetic lies in front and along the sides of the spine, 
and supplies the organs over which the will and consciousness have no 
immediate control, such as the intestines, liver, heart, &c. Its numerous 
ganglia (centres and originators of nervous influence) are the knots of a 
nervous reticulation which connects not only the organs of organic life one 
with the other, but these also with the brain and spinal cord. It is due to 
this— separately or conjointly with the spinal cord in its reflex or excito- 
motor capacity, deri.fed from its own ganglionic axis or pith, giving it 
also independent and automatic powers, powers not sensibly dependent 
upon the consciousness or will for their exercise— that all the vital func- 
tions do not come to a stand still in our first slumber. 

X The opinion, which attributes to the Cerebellum the power of asso- 
ciating or co-ordinating the diflereut voluntary movements, is the one now 
most generally received. Destroyed, the gubernatorial faculty is lost and 
the animal staggers and falls like a drunken man. In addition to this, it 
has been supposed, that whatever the cerebrum docs rationally and by fits, 
the cerebellum does unconsciously and permanently— so that in sleep, the 
motions of thought and will not being organically but only consciously sus- 



THE MICROCOSM. 51 

And rescue from the clutclies of tlie grave, — 
When Sleep would else liave caused immediate death, 
Stopped the heart's action, and cut short the l)reath, 
Drying each source, that fed and kept alive 
Th' industrious Ijccs in the organic hive.* 

SPIEITTJAL AlfALOGIES. 

As light to Eye, so to the Soul, in sooth, 
The light of God, the higher light of Truth. 
How, when man fell, his dark and hungry eyes 
Looked for the sunrise in the eastern skies ! 
Filled with all douljt, and wandering forlorn. 
Watching for signs of the delaying morn ! 
Ah ! should it never j^reak, the stumbling feet 



pended, need to be maintained and kept up to their proper level, and that 
this is the office of the cerebellum, which like the chain and springs of 
a watch, not only regulate its movements, but prevent it from running 
suddenly down. 

* While an exaggerated importance may have been given to the doctrine 
of Cell Formation, the truth of it seems to be well established. The state 
nient of Virchow that, "Every animal presents itself as a sum of vital 
unities, every one of which mauifests all the characteristics of life," al- 
though hypothetical, at least in part, is a convenient formula for explaining 
many vital phenonmena observed both in health and disease. Receiving 
it, it certainly justifies the figure here used— the bee working M'ith a blind 
instinct, being compared to that organic intelligence, which resident in 
each cell presides over the functions of nutrition, secretion and elimination. 



52 THE 3IICE0C0SM. 

Go stumbling onward to the Judgment Seat ; 

And toward tlie guilty, should tliere be ]io ruth 

In the just Ijosom of the God of Truth; 

Those images of horror and aftright. 

Projected on the canvass of the night, 

Should aye be present, wheresoever he turn. 

And God's fierce anger never cease to burn ! 

Ah ! when the parting heavens some gleam let through, 

Some gleam of promise shining through the blue ; — 

Ah, more! when that the Dayspring froni on high 

Told that the Sun of Righteousness was nigh ; — 

Waving glad wings of many colored flame. 

Fore-running angels certified lie came ; — 

Then most of all, Avlien following full soon, 

Upon his midnight burst eternal noon ; — 

How to the heavenly host his pulses beat. 

Timed to the music of their marching feet! 

CONGENITAL BLINDNESS— AW AEDS OF THE LAST DAT. 

Alas, for those, who, haply blind from birth, 
Have never seen the loveliness of earth : 



THE MICROCOSM. 53 

To whose rapt gaze, the spectacle ne'er given, 
Of all the dread maguiticence of heaven : 
One mighty blank, one nniversal black, 
The moving wonders of the Zodiac: 
The constellations from their fixed abode, 
Shed no sweet influence on their darkling road : 
Their rolling eyeballs turn, and find no ray; 
An unknown joy, the Ijlessedness of day. 

Between the man, who, in his neighbor's gi'ief, 
"With swiftest pity, flies to his relief; 
And him, whose cruel and unnatural part 
It is to plague and wring his brother's heart, 
HoAv deep the gulf! hoAv different the award. 
At the great final coming of the Lord ! 
In the Last Judgment, all the world shall hear 
The silent thunder prisoned in a tear*— 



* Faraday has shown hy the most conclnsive experiments, that the elec- 
tricity which decomposes, and that which is evolved by the decomposition 
of a certain quantity of matter are alike. A single drop of water there- 
fore contains as much electricity as could he accumulated in 800,000 Ley- 
den jars — a quantity equal to that which is developed from a charged 
thunder cloud. 



54 THE MICROCOSM. 

The pent up wrath shall strike tlie tyrant tliere, 
Who wonUl not pity, and Avho would not spare. 

ASYLirilS rOE THE BLIND. 

Thou, who wert styled th' Apostle of the Blind, 
No bays too green, thine honored brows to bind ; 
Who toiled and sacrificed beyond the sea — 
'Tis right to name thee, Valentin Haiiy !* 
To render happier a cheerless lot ; 
Enrich with knowledge those who have it not; 
To pour new light into the darkened mind, 
And force an entrance where it none can iind ; 
By novel methods, and ingenious tools. 
Imparting all the learning of the schools ; 
For loss of one, obtaining recompense, 



* Louis IX., Ijetter known as St. Louis, in 1260 founcled the Hospice cles 
quinze vingts at Paris— designed, as its name implies, originally for 15 
score or 300 persons— which still exists. This is believed to have been 
the first public provision ever made for the Blind. It was solely eleemos- 
j-nary. No instruction was attempted. Although in the IGth century at- 
tempts were made to print for the Blind in intaglio and afterwards in 
relief, nothing material was accomplished, till 1784, when Valentin Ilaiiy, 
"the apostle of the blind"' as the French named him, commenced his 
arduous, and self-denying labors, and laid the foundations of the modern 
system. His pupils became eminent as musicians or mathematicians. 



THE MICMOGOSM. 55 

In the perfection of another sense ; 
Inspiring music, bringing heaven so near, 
They almost think tliey see it as they hear ; — 
Is like that work, in kind if not degree. 
Done Bartimeus, -when Christ made him see. 

ASYLUMS FOE THE DEAF AND DUim. 

Not less their praise, nor less their high reward, 
Th' uuequaled heroes of a task more hard 
Enthusiasts, who Ial)ored to Ijridge o'er 
The gulf of silence, never passed before. 
To reach the solitaire, who lived apart,* 
Cut off from commerce ^nth the human heart : 
To whom had Ijeen, all goings on below, 
A ceremonious and unmeaning show ; 



* The possibility of teaching the Deaf and Dumb was never conceived 
by the ancients. Useless to the State, their destruction in infancy was 
even connived at ; and they were classed legally with idiots and the insane. 
Plunged in a night of the profoundest ignorance, sitting apart in utter 
loneliness, their state was the saddest possible. Attempts to instruct 
them belong mostly to modern times. Three systems have been adopted 
in different countries. 1. That of Wallis, Pereira, Heinicke and Braid- 
wood, which falsely assumed that while signs may give vague ideas there 
can be no precision without words. Consequently the first years under 
this system were devoted almost wholly to learning articulation and read- 
ing on the lip. 2. That of abbe De I'Epee as imj^roved by Sicard and 



56 THJE MICROCOSM. 

Men met in council, on occasions proud, 
Nought but a nioutliing and grimacing crowd ; 
And all the great transactions of the time, 
An idle scene or puzzling i)antomime. 
Children of silence ! deaf to every sound 
That trembles in the atmosphere around, 
Now far more happy — dancing ri2)ples break 
Upon the marge of that once stagnant lake. 
Aye liy fresh breezes overswept, and stirred 
With the viljrations of new thoughts conferred. 
No more your minds are heathenish and dumb. 
Now that the word of truth and grace has come ; 
Your silent praise, that penitential tear. 
Are quite articulate to your Saviour's car. 



Bebian, which proceeds on the directly opposite theory that there is no idea 
which may not be expressed by signs without words. Sign language has 
the important advantage, besides many others that might be named, of beiog 
universal. 3. The American system, which is a further modification of 
De TEpee's. The number of deaf mutes who have distinguished them- 
selves in science and art is already quite considerable. My friend, Mr. John 
R. Burnet, farmer and author, living at Livingston, N. J., is one of the 
best informed men iu the State. 



THE MICROCOSM. 57 

HKABING— POWEBS OF SOTJNIt— MTJSIO OF NATUBB, 

Within a l^ouy labj-rintliean cave, 
Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave, 
This sibj^l, sweet, and mystic Sense is found — 
Muse, that presides o'er all the Powers of Sound, 
Viewless and numberless, these everywhere 
Wake to the finest tremble of the air : 
Now from some mountain height ai-e heard to call ; 
Now from the bottom of some water-fall ; 
Now faint and far, now louder and more near, 
With varying cadence musical and clear ; — 
Heard in the brooklet murmuring o'er the lea ; 
Heard in the roar of the resounding sea ; 
Heard in the thunder rolling through the sky ; 
Heard in the little insect chia-ping nigh ; 
The winds of winter wailing through the woods ; 
The mighty laughter of the vernal floods ; 
The rain-drops' showery dance and rhythmic beat, 
With tinkling of innumerable feet ; 
Pursuing echos calling 'mong the rocks ; 



58 THE MICROCOSM. 

Lowing of herds, and bleating of the flocks ; 
Tlie tender nightingale's melodious grief; 
The sky-lark's warbled rapture of belief — 
Arrow of j^raise, direct from nature's quiver, 
Sent duly up to the Almighty Giver. 

MUSIC OF AET— INSTBXmElTTAL AOT) VOCAi. 

If once, ye Powers, with reeds, a rustic Pan, 
Ye tuned idyllic minstrelsies for man. 
These thin dilutions of the soul of song. 
Ye have abandoned, and abandoned long. 
Sweet as the spheral music of the skies, 
The thunder of your later haMnonies. 
O fill the void caiDacious atniosjjhere 
With your full sum, and jjour it in the ear ; 
Drown it with melody, nor let it wade 
Longer in shallows, of the cleei') afraid. 
Join to all instruments of wind and cords 
The poetry and excellence of words. 
If Country calls, put in the Trumpet's throat 
A loud and stirring and a warlike note ; 



THE MICROCOSM. 

And let there follow an inspiring blast, 

As the long file of lieroes hurry past ; 

Then raise th' exultant clamor to its height, 

Wlien croAvned as victors, they return from fight. 

Because the service God demands of men 

Is not an intermittent thing of nov\' and then, 

Temples of permanence we rightly raise, 

For the perpetual purposes of praise ; 

And build great Organs, in whose tubes of sound, 

Sleeping or waking, ye are always found : 

Awake ! prepare Te Deums ! now awake ! 

Wave your great wings till all the building shake I 

Rend the Ioav roof, and rend the vault of heaven. 

Bearing the rapture of a soul forgiven ! 

VOICE— AIK OP EXPIRATION, ITS TEANSMUTATI0N8. 

Wonderful instrument, but not so choice 
As is the Organ of the Human Voice. 
What compact proof of Heavenly Power and Skill, 
When simplest means sublimest ends fulfill. 
That two stringed Lyre, quick strung to every note. 



eO THE MICROCOSM. 

Placed at the windy entrance of the throat — 

"With a divine economy of room, 

So placed it might the smallest sj^ace consume, 

There where the aerial currents come and go. 

To feed the vital fires that bum belovf, 

And with a quickening purifying force, 

The blood to freshen in its onward course — 

Taking the waste, effete and useless breath, 

Charged with the very element of death. 

Converts it into music, glorious shapes " 

Of i)ower and beauty, ere that breath escapes. 

A transformation marvellous and strange, 

Unequalled, in the Alchemy of change. 

Harmonious forces working to condense 

The blazing jewels of intelligence : 

Diamonds more rich than proudest monarchs wear, 

Formed from the gaseous carbon of the air ; 

Th' imperial currency of human wit. 

Image and superscription stamped on it, 

Coined from the atmosphere, th' exhaustless mine 



TEE MICROCOSM. 61 

Of golden treasures niagical and fine ; 
Chief circulating medium of thought, 
And common mintage by which truth is bought, 
And wisdom in its infinite supply, 
Stored in th' invisible market of the sky ! 
SPEECH accountable: self-eecokdikg— mathematical pboblem. 

O Heart and Mouth — in strictest wedlock bound — 
Whence sjjring th' immortal births of soul and sound! 
Winged for far flight, your moral offspring sweep 
The airy fields of the cerulean deep, 
Up to the awful jDlace, where Judgment waits 
Within Eternity's tremendous gates. 

Philosophy itself may serve to teach 
No power so fearful as the Power of Si^eech : 
The idle word, which nothing can recall, 
Breaks sacred silence thrilling through the All ; 
Yea, like a pebble ch-opped into the sea. 
Ripples the ocean of immensity : 
An oath profane, the horror of a lie. 
The shuddering Ether bears beyond the sky ; 



63 THE MICROCOSM. 

Sounding through height and depth, its way it takes 

To distant spheres, and endless echos wakes : 

After long ages, still can be-inferred. 

The sense and nature of each uttered word, 

Declared in postured particles, because 

The dance of atoms is by rhythmic laws : 

For that another cannot be the same, 

God calls each atom by a different name ; 

Makes these an alphabet, by which to spell 

Each sentence spoken, and each syllable ; 

Beyond the power of parchment, or of pen, 

Expounding all the utterances of men.* 



* Mr. Charles Babbage, an English Mathematician of the first rank, lor- 
merly Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the Chair of New- 
ton, famous also as the inventor of a Calculating Machine, built at a cost 
to the English Government of $85,000, followed by another involving 
a still heavier outlay— in a work styled "The Ninth Bridgewater Trea- 
tise," published in 1838, filled with much original and quaint speculation, 
expresses his faith in the startling doctrine that no word or action can 
ever be eliminated from the records of Nature, but that the air is a "vast 
library," in whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or 
woman whispered, inasmuch as the aerial pulses which seemed to have 
died out completely might yet be demonstrated by human reason to exist. 
So of the ocean. A being possessed of unbounded powers of mathematical 
analysis might trace the results of any impulse on the fluid, or read back 
the history of the sea in its own billows. And so too, the solid frame of 



THE MICROCOSM. 63 

ITS BOCIAX USES— THE WOED JIADE FLESH. 

Most genial of the fliculties is this, 
And most subservient to social bliss ; 
Fulfills the longing as no other can, 
When man would manifest himself to man*^ 
The isolated soul shut up no more 
Walks freely forth as through an open door. 

Vainly in inarticulate dumb show, 
Had Nature strove to teach man here below ; 
When finding, that intended to reveal. 
Served but the more His presence to conceal, 
God put aside the Vesture of the Skies, 
And walked and talked with men in Human Guise : 
Th' apocalyptic Word, made Flesh, made thus 
Communicated Godhead — God With Us. 



the earth may serve as a stereot3T)ed record both of the transactions and 
the proceedings of its inhabitants ; for not only the heavings of the greatest 
earthquakes, bnt the little local tremors which the stamp of a human foot 
may produce, may all be said to have left their memorials in the ground. 
Heaven and earth are therefore prepared to bear witness against the trans- 
gressor on the Day of Judgment. Terrible thoughts these, but what if 
they are true 1 



6i THE MICROCOSM. 

AETIOtTLATION—NOSB— MOUTH— BSIELI/—TASTK. 

Behold how man, the polyglot, emiiloys 
Th' uncompoimded elemental noise ! 
Makes endless permutations, mixes breath 
For nice intonings of each shibboleth ! 
Ul) from the Throat, one little stej), we reach 
The cunning moulds and matrices of speech ; 
Formless and void the vocal chaos flows, 
Shajjed into Language by the Mouth and Nose ; 
Mellifluous modulations taking place, 
In scented caverns of the hollow face ; 
Sweet mobile Lips, Teeth, Palate, flavorous Tongue, 
Making intelligible the speaking Lung ; 
Aiders of Speech, but then the seats as well 
Of the two senses of the Taste and Smell. 

SMELL— ODOBS: THEIE StTBTLETT AlTD IMPONDEEABILITT. 

The Nerves of Smell, the first the brain to leave, 
Combed and divided through a bony sieve,* 
They, from their tresses of disheveled hair 

* The ethmoid bone, (from vS/^oc, 'a sieye,' and €i(h^, 'form.') 



THE MICROCOSM. 65 

Shake out the tangled fragrance of the air. 
Conversant with all sweetness— Nature brings 
Hither the soul and quintessence of things ; 
Aii-y solutions of the finer i^owers, 
Imponderable properties of flowers ; 
Th' aroma of all seasons and all times, 
Kingdoms of nature, continents and climes — 
Too subtle and too sinritual, I ween, 
These for analysis however keen — 
Daintiest of senses, daintily it feeds 
On thymy pastures of the skyey meads. 
Drinks from etherial fountains, whence are quaffed 
Delicious lungfuUs at one mighty draught, 
Cheermg the breast, and sweetening all the blood. 
Like some celestial minister of good. 

BBEATH OF LIFE, NATUEAI, AUD SPIEITTJAI/. 

God breathed — O breath with heavenly sweetness rife,- 
Into man's nostrils first the breath of life. 
The blissful aura vivified the whole. 
And straightway man became a living soul. 



66 THE MICROCOSM. 

Then odorous Eden j'et more odorous grew 

As o'er its bowers, th' informing Spirit blew 

Another inner and diviner air, 

Moving within the proper atmosphere, 

That shook the leaves and made the tree-tops nod, 

A mystic wind immediately fi'om God, — 

Rushing and mighty like the Holy Ghost 

Poured out upon the day of Pentecost. 

Still the same Spirit where it lists it blows. 

We know not whence it comes nor where it goes. 

But souls it quickened on Creation's morn, 

Now dead in sin to a new life are born : 

One inspiration of immortal breath 

Creates a life Ijeneath the ribs of death. 

THEOPNEXTSTT. 

O via sacra, O thrice 1 blessed door. 
Once hallowed with Thy presence, hallow. Lord, once 

more : 
Inbreathe Thyself, my Maker ! fill each cell 
Of my deep breast, and deign with me to dwell. 



THE MICROCOSM. 67 

Come, my Desire ! Thou theme of heavenly tongues, 
Fulfill the wiint and hunger of the lungs. 
Be thou my breath, my laughter, my delight. 
My song by day, my murmured dream hy night. 
Wlien hope dilates, and love my l^osom wanns. 
Be these the product of thy powerful charms. 
If grief convulses, be it grief for sin, 
Prompt every sigh and make me pure within. 
Perfumed l)y Thee " make every breath a spice 
And each religious act a sacrifice." 

TASTE— ELIMINATION AND WASTE— NOTHING LOST. 

We eat to live : the Gustatory Sense 
(The same as Smell, but with a difference,) 
At the pleased portal of the hungry throat, 
From endless sources neighboring and remote. 
Assembles relishes, and daily feeds 
On these to satisfy the body's needs. 
Each moment, lo, we die and are reborn ;* 



* "Occasio enim prseceps est propter artis materiam, clico antem corpus, 
quod continue fluit et momento temporis transmutatur. "—&a/tn. 



68 2EE MICROCOSM. 

The old 1)ecomes cadaverous and outworn ; 
Beyond the bounthiry of our every Ijreath, 
Wide yawns the open sepulchre of death : 
Parts of our living selves give up the ghost : 
Corrupt, corrupting, use and function lost, 
Benignant Nature with victorious force 
Effects deliverance from the loathed corse 
And body of this death : in ceaseless flow, 
Fun'ral processions of dead atoms go. 
Thronging life's ways and outward opening gates, 
All unattended, where no mourner waits. 
Because the quick have duties, let the dead 
Bury their dead, the Lord of life hath said. 
No fear that needful ministry or rite 
Shall then be Avanting when they pass from sight ; 
Sown on the winds or swallowed of the waves 
They shall not t\iil of hospitable graves. 
Dear to terrestial and celestial powers, 
Through every moment of the flying hours ; 
Earth, careful mother, to her bosom draws 



TEE MICROCOSM. 69 

Eacli reverent particle subject to her laws ; 
Dust welcomes dust, and all the liappy ground 
Rejoices that the lost again is found. 
Again it forms a portion of the mould 
To tread the circle it fulfilled of old. 
Again it ministers to the thirsty root, 
Mounts to the l)lossom and matures the fruit ; 
Eaten again, again it makes a part, 
Or of the thmking brain or feeling heart. 

HTTMAN WAUT AND DIVINE StTPPLT. 

Because we ne'er continue in one stay — 
Our flowing lives still wash their banks away ; 
This colliquation of unstable flesh, 
Invades the old and scarcely spares the fresh ; 
The new formed solid, even, oozes through, 
' Thaws and resolves itself into a dew ;" 
And all is flux, and out ten thousand doors 
Our manly strength perpetually pours — 
We Hunger and We Thirst, and all abroad 
We see spread out the mighty Feast of God. 



TO THE MICROCOSM. 

Abounding plenty equal to the waste 
With luscious adaptations to the taste ; 
Viands licajDed up in sucli seductive guise, 
Forestalling ijleasure looks with sparkling eyes : 
The golden produce of the garnered fields, 
Whate'er the valley or the mountain yields, 
The juicy tops of Nature, not that found 
In the dark mineral lumpish underground. 
By intenuediate vegetative toil. 
And much elal)oration of the soil, 
Lifted in air and glowing in the sun. 
We pluck the fruit then when the work is done. 
In curious quest of every dainty known. 
We di'aw from every month and cveiy zone. 
To pile our boards, the canvas is unfurled 
Of more than half the navies of the world. 
Art intervenes, and as the case requires. 
Concocts the crude with culinary fires : 
Goes forth in nature to extend her range, 
And serve man's love of novelty and change. 



IHE MICROCOSM. 1l 

By findings of manipulative skill, 

Testings and tastings, mixing at lier will 

Of all the kingdoms, flavorings of tlie same. 

And seasonings of vegetable flame. 

Imperious Wants! obedient to whose call, 

Ai'mies cai)itulate, dynasties fall : 

Howe'er the rulers of the earth combine. 

They may not blink the fact that man must dine. 

It might seem little and beneath God's care — 
A pimctual ordering of man's common fare ; 
Unwan-anted, extravagant, absurd, 
To think our Pater Nosters could be heard — 
Did we not know that round our every meal 
Suns wait and serve and mighty planets wheel. 

lobd's phateb— hodiernal beead— hygienio ■wisdom. 

Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name — 
'Tis on Thy fatherhood we l^uild our claim — 
Stoop to our needs, we cannot else be fed, 
Give us this day, as erst, our daily bread. 
Preserve us from perversion and alnise. 



72 THE MICMOGOSM. 

Turning Thy bounties from their proper use ; 
From ghittony and criminal excess, 
Making enough our rule, nor more nor less. 
Instruct its how to choose, lest that wc sin 
Against the body's health, the powers within, 
A\yful economies and sacred laws, 
Of half our miseries the dreadful cause. 
]\Iay we live imiocent as at the iirst, 
Using safe beverages to quench our thirst, 
Our common drink be water from the well, 
Not brewed enchantments of the tires of hell, 
Not tasting unblest cups, by Thee unblest. 
But where Satanic l^enedictions rest, 
Cursing and killing, maddening the brain — 
Brief joy succeeded by eternal pain. 

rNQESTION— DIGESTION— ASSmrLATION. 

Be in our Mouths to sanctify our Food ; 
Begin the process changing it to Blood. 
Wc dare not call that common and unclean 
Which Thou hast cleansed — nor count that longer mean 



THE MICROCOSM. 73 

So honored by assimilations grand, 
And exaltations of Thine own right hand, 
As through the channels of the body rolled, 
Th' ingested Morsel comes to be ensouled. 
Wherefore be present, every step attend 
Of its miraculous progress to the end. 
During the perilous passage of the strait, 
O keep fast shut the Laryngeal Gate : 
Adown the Throat while that it gently glides, 
And in the Stomach's secret chaml)er hides, 
Be there to entertain th' expected guest. 
And to the welcome give a keener zest. 
Make the couch ready : and mid veiling gloom. 
And holy j^rivacy as in a womb, 
Induct into the mysteries of the place : 
Rain down celestial influence and grace 
Upon the nascent neophyte ; i)rei)arc 
The layers of regeneration ; where 
By wondrous saturations* for a time, 



* The Gastric Juice, like the saliva, is not secreted in considerable quan- 
10 



74 THE MICROCOSM. 

And fresh bai^tisms of the new-born Chyme, 
A part all purified, from soil purged clear, 
Made meet and worthy of a higher sphere, 
Enters the veins and mingles with the blood : 
The rest a stained probationary flood, 
Passmg the Gate Pyloric waits awhile, 
Its transformation into purer Chyle. 
Prosper and bless and let the work proceed, 
Each faithful function equal to the need : 
Teach the strict Lactcals, duly this to guide 
Into the narrow way from out the wide. 
Where freed from feculence all white and clean. 
And trained, through mazes of the Glands between. 
For saintly fellowship and spousals sweet 
With the dear Lymph, as they together meet 
Within the Duct Thoracic, mount to gain 



tity (Dr Beaumont says not at all) except under the stimulus of recently 
ingested food. It is estimated that the average total quantity secreted in a 
man of medium size in 24 hours is 14 pounds, equal to nearly two gallons. 
This quantity would be altogether incredible, were it not, that as soon as it 
has dissolved its quota of food, it is immediately re-absorbed and again 
enters into the circulation, together with the alimentary substances which 
it holds in solution.— i^a^ton. 



THE MICROCOSM. 76 

The level of the pierced Subclavian Vein — 
Tempering the mass, to form a fluid part 
Of that humanity which fills the Ueart. 

HEAET— CIRCULATION— NtTTBITION— BLOOD EXHILIKATIONS. 

Make room, my Heart!* that pour'st thyself abroad, 
Deep, central, awful mystery of God ! 
Lord of my bosom ! wonder of the breast ! 
" Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest :" 
The young white l)lood, commingled with the old — 
Purple, impure, effete in part, and cold — 
Give needful furtherance through the Lungs, to where 
It meets the fiery spirits of the air — 



* In the Fish, the Ileart is a single organ, having one Auricle and one 
Ventricle. In Reptiles, it has two Auricles placed side hy side, and one 
Ventricle. In Quadrupeds and Man, it is double, with two Auricles and 
two Ventricles ; and there are two distinct Circulations— the General or 
Systemic, and Pulmonary. The Blood on the Eight Side of the Ileart, 
whether found in the Veins or Arteries, is dark or venous ; on the Left, 
it is ruddy and bright or arterial. The first belongs to the nocturnal side 
or hemissphere ; the latter to the diurnal — the sun having its rising in 
the capillaries of the lungs, and its setting in those of the general system 
— where the blood loses for the time its auroral bloom and splendor, 
and becomes dark, half devitalized and charged with deadly poison, until 
having completed its circuit, its pristine glitter and beauty are once more 
restored, as it reappears on the horizon of the lungs. The rapidity with 
which the Blood moves is very great. Even in Arteries of the minutest 
size it is so rapid that the globules cannot be distinguished in it on micro- 



76 THE MICROCOSM. 

In friendly barter with the growing plants 
Exchanging what they need for what it wants; 
For dingy carbon, refuse of the frame, 
Receiving back the princii^le of flame ; 
While mystic cerebrations downward pour, 
The human flood to humanize yet more, 
Making it moral, with all passions rife, 
Instinct with mortal and immortal life. 
Transfigured thus, thus raised and glorified. 
Complete the circle on the other side. 
Where Auricle and Ventricle with power 
Repeat their grasp five thousand times an hour ; 
Closiucr unrestins: hands that never tu'e 



scopic examination. It is Blower in the Veins than the Arteries, in the 
proportion of two to three, and still slower in the Capillaries. Volkman 
estimates the velocity in the arteries at 12 inches per second ; in veins at 8 
inches. Experiments have been made to ascertain the time it takes the 
blood to pass the entire round of the circulation. Traces of a solution of 
Ferrocyanide of Potassium introduced into the right jugular vein of a 
horse appeared at the fe/"Mn twenty to twenty-five seconds, but this is 
not decisive of the rate of the circulation, only of the diffusion. Results 
swarm with every heart-beat. Life's innumerable wheels, revolving all at 
once in every organ, make that beat representative of a life-time— a century 
of existence being no more than a calculable number of repetitions of that 
vital second. 



TEE MICROCOSM. 7? 

On the one passionate object of desire ; 
And through each moment of the night and day 
A traveling joy to every part convey ; 
Filling each Cell of all the Organs up — 
As wine is poured into a jeweled cup — 
With the Falemian of the grapes of Heaven, 
The Living Blood miraculously given ; 
Endued with plenteous power by which it can 
Rebuild the complex of the perfect man ; 
To every organ like to like imjjart, 
Distribute brain to brain and heart to heart ; 
Conquer the years, the wastes of time repair, 
Add to -the body, make the fair more fair: 
Nor potent less to raise to loftiest heights 
Of sensuous pleasures, and divine delights — 
Untied to fleshly ministrations — fraught 
With stimulant to Feeling and to Thought, 
Our Ganymede, enlivening with full bowl 
" The feast of reason and the flow of soul." 



78 TEE MICROCOSM. 

HEAET— SEAT OF THE AFFECTIONS— TISOEEAX MODIFICATIONS 

Undoubted Sovereign, worthiest to reign ! 
Sliarcr of empire with the regal Brain ! 
(Like omnipresent in the reahns of sense 
Found at tlie centre and circumference, 
As if l)y multiplification, every part 
Possessed a sensory and beating heart) 
By virtue of thy liirth right from al)ovc 
Thine all the high prerogatives of Love. 
One with thyself, Love's ample power display, 
Assert its right to universal sway ! 
As thou, so Love is many and yet one. 
Its royal roljes of soul and body spim — 
Assorted vestments, tilling many a room. 
The beauteous product of the living loom. 
By the deft fingers of the feelings wrought 
Plying the shuttle with the helping thought — 
The several organs, to their nature true, 
Giving each tunic its distinctive hue — 
One of the colors of refracted lit^ht, 



THE MICROCOSM. 79 

Or the chaste total of religious white — 
Defining Loves, all Family Loves that bind 
The Love of Country, Love of Human Kind, 
The Love of God, all other Loves above, 
The Love of Truth and Right, the Love of Love. 

Within, what gracious symi^athies appeal ! 
What visceral yearnings do not mothers feel ! 
The conscious vitals, full of fond alarms 
For the sweet infant folded in her arms, 
And melting tendernesses, that imjjart 
Tears to the eyes but laughter to the heart. 

WOMAN— SEX— UinCTY IN DrFFEEENCE. 

O loving Woman, man's fulfillment sweet, 
Completing him not otherwise complete ! 
How void and useless the sad remnant left 
Were he of her, his noljler part bereft ! 
Of her who bears the sacred name of Wife, 
The joy and crown and gloiy of his life. 
The Mother of his Children, whereby he 
Shall live in far ofi" ei)ochs yet to be. 



80 THE MICROCOSM. 

Conjoined but not confounded, side by side 

Lying so closely nothing can divide ; 

A dual self, a plural unit, twain, 

Except in sex, to be no more again ; 

Except in Sex, for sex can naught eflface, 

Fixed as the granite mountain on its base, 

But not for this less one, away to take 

This sweet distinction were to mar not make. 

Dearer for difference in this respect, 

As means of rounding mutual defect. 

Woman and Man all social needs include ; 

Earth tilled with men were still a solitude : 

In vain the birds would sing, in vain rejoice. 

Without the music of her sweeter voice. 

In vain the stars would shine, 'twere dark the while 

Without the liglit of her superior smile. 

To blot from earth's vocabularies one 

Of all her names were to blot out the sun. 

LOVE OF TDE SEXES— EITDS A2J8WEEED. 

O wondrous Hour, supremest hour of fate, 



TEE MICROCOSM. 81 

Wlieu first the Soul discerns its proi^er Mate — 
By inward voices known as its elect — 
Distanced hj love, and infinite respect, 
Fairer than faii-est, shining from afiir, 
Throned in the heights, a bright particular star 
The glory of the firmament, tlie evening sky 
Glad with the lustre of her beaming eye. 
Young Love, First Love, Love, haply at first sight, 
Smites like the lightning, dazzles like the light : 
Chance meeting eyes shoot forth contagious flame 
Sending the hot blood wildly through the frame. 
By strange enchantment violently strook, 
The total being rushes with a look : 
A beauty never seen before, exceijt some gleams 
Purpling the atmosphere of blissful cU'eams, 
Wakens rare raptures and sensations new 
Both soul and )>ody thrilling through and through. 

Says sage Experience — sighing o'er the past — 
These dear illusions will not always last ? 
11 



TEE MICROCOSM. 

For beauty fades and disajjpointmeut clings 

To the reality of liumau tilings ? 

It may be so — it may be, lovers' sight 

Surveying all things by love's purple light, 

Sees not the faults possession shall disclose, 

Xor the sliarp thorn concealed beneath the rose. 

But if thus Xature her great ends attain 

The pomps of fancy dazzle not in vain : 

The pleasing falsehood of perfection tiits, 

But not the Love, that in contentment sits 

Among the Deivr Ones of its haj^py home, 

Blest with sweet foretastes of the heaven to come. 

Deciduous charms of face unmissed dej^art, 

"While bloom the fadeless beauties of the heart : 

Inward conformity, and gradual growth 

Of moral likeness, tightening bonds of both. 

Perfect the marriage, which was but begun 

Upon tliat day they were pronounced one. 

TErE LOTH- SPtTBIOrS LOVE. 

True Love is humble, thereby is it known 



THE MICROCOSM. 83 

Girded for service, seeking not its own ; 
Exalts its o1)ject, timid homage pays, 
Vaunts not itself, but speaks in self-dispraise : 
" Look not on me," it says, for " ' I am l)lack,' 
In thee all fulness is, in me all lack : 
But what I have and am are wholly thine 
Vast were the grace Avouldst thou give thine for mine." 

Let Love but enter, it converts the churl, 
And makes the miser lavish as an earl ; 
The strict walls of his prison, giving way, 
Fall outward and let in the light of day : 
Released from base captivity to pelf. 
He upward soars into a nobler self; 
And hands, that once did nought but clutch and hoard. 
Now emulate the bounty of the Lord ; 
Hold up a mirror that reflects the face 
Of Him whose heart is love and man-ward grace. 

O how unlike to this, so chaste, refined, 
Magnanimous, benevolent and kind, 
Is that base thmg defiling and defiled, 



84 THE MICROCOS^r. 

Born of unliriclled lusts and passions wild, 
Whicli soon of all the virtues rings the knell 
And sends its sulyects headlong down to hell. 
The hidden canker of a vicious heart 
Spreads mortal sickness to the farthest part : 
Th' infected body rots from day to day 
Till death contemptuous calls the soul away, 
To its own place its sentence to fulfill : 
" Let him that filthy is be filthy still." 

CHARITT— PHTSICIA2I— OPrFEKQTJE PEE OKBEM DICOB.' 

O Ye devoted to the Healing Art 
By solemn consecration, set ai)art 
To be the ministers of God above 
In the sublime Activities of Love ; 
Whose sjiecial function 'tis to give relief 
In the dark hours of suffering and of grief; 
Between the living and the dead, to stand 
Where foil the shafts of death on either hand; 
Without one thought of flight, to still maintain 
* Motto of the Society. 



THE MICR0C0S3I. 85 

Perpetual battle with the Powers of Pain ; 
With a tine arrow from a well l^ent l^ow 
Transfixing fatally the murd'rons foe ; 
And with an arm made powerful to save, 
Snatching the destined victims of the grave; — 
The lofty nature of your office such, 
You cannot magnify the same too much, 
Which TuUy even, eloquently lauds, 
As that which lifts man nearest to the gods. 

NOSOLOGY— ATJSCTJXTATION OF IlEAET AND LTTNGS. 

How many forms of sickness man befall. 
Sorrow and pain the common lot of all ! 
Science enquires, and as its kinship finds 
Makes classes, orders, families and kinds. 
Grouping and marshalling diseases so 
You can them l^etter nominate and know. 
But no nosology did e'er include 
The total of the mighty multitude. 

Wise to interpret each prophetic sign. 
To pierce the veil and hidden fates divine, 



THE MICMOCOSM. 

When jjarents ask. -with grief and terror wild, 
Canst thou not save \\\\ darling, save my child ? 
Yon skilled to catch, while listening to the lireatli, 
The distant footstei^s of approaching death 
May in the sighing of the siiifering lung 
And in its stillness hear alike a tongue 
That syllables oracular reply : 
" Impossible, "tis fixed, your child must die." 
Response more dread not Delphic i>rophetess 
E'er shuddered from her murmurous recess. 

With rush of countless chariots, palpitates 
Life's great metropolis through all her gates, 
Tlieii" crimson wheels with a peii^etual sound, 
Coming and going in their endless round. 
Are heard tumultuous as thy hurrying throng 
Th" Appian or Flaminian ways along : 
Tis yours to know next hour all this will fail, 
And death and silence everywhere prevail. 

PHTSICIAX'S CHAEACTEB AJTD AUIS— SCTEXCE PBOGKESSITE. 

O it is well that ve have hearts to feel 



THE MICROCOSM. 87 

And ears not deaf to pity's soft appeal, 
Putting uo diiference 'twixt rich and poor, 
Plying with equal zeal the means of cure, 
Not deeming it becoming to regard 
Color or rank or person or reward. 
The man of impure life and sordid aims 
He smuts his office and his calling shames : 
Him you disown and place him under ban 
As nothing better than a charlatan. 
Believing needless ignorance a crime, 
You strive to reach the summit of your time ; 
To old age learning up from early youth 
Your life one long apprenticeship to truth : 
Wisely suspicions sometimes of the new. 
Ye give alert acceptance to the true : 
Even though it make old science obsolete. 
It with a thousand welcomes still you greet. 
" Knowledge is power," and here 'tis power to save, 
A i)ower like God's to rescue from the grave. 
Each Year adds something — many things ye know 



88 THE MICROCOSM. 

Your sires knew not a Hundred Years ago ; 

All grown to more, your sons will liiglier climl), 

And make the Coming Centuries sublime : 

Till Christ's Millennial Kingdom shall begin, 

And i)ut an end to sickness and to sin. 

Heiglits of the Future ! hvcczj with the breath 

Of vernal quickening to the lields of Death, 

In the far distance of the long before, 

We think we see your misty summits soar : 

Though scarce distinguished from the mingling skies, 

How glad the sight to our believing eyes ! 

SPIBITTJAi MALADIES— CITEIST THE GKEAT PHTSICIAtf. 

Ah I there are maladies beyond your skill : 
You cannot cure depravity of will : 
You cannot mend a moral nature flawed. 
Convert a mind at enmity with God : 
You cannot terminate the inward strife, 
Restore the broken harmony of life : 
With all th' armamentarium of Art 
Restrain the outflow of an evil heart : 



THE MICROCOSM .88 

Cleanse by detergent washings of tbe skin 
Th' immedicable leprosy of sin : 
Remove the lunacy that chooses death, 
And imprecates destruction with each breath. 
When came the Great Physician of the Skies, 
To find a remedy that should suffice, 
Knowing 'twas not in mineral or wood, 
He sought it in a Pharmacy of Blood ; 
And since none other but His own was jiure. 
He transfused that to consummate the cure. 
Man curing when past cure — content to give 
Himself to die to make His patient live. 

DEATH— UQIOETAXITY—EESXrEEECTION—SPIEITITAI, BODY. 

Death spreads, no more — a black and wrathful cloud 

The smiling infinite of heaven to shroud — 

A harmless mist, instead, divinely bright 

With dewy splendors of the morning light, 

That scarcely serves th' eternal world to hide, 

Where loved ones gone before in bliss abide : 

Lo ! what a mighty beckoning of hands, 
12 



90 TEE MICROCOSM. 

And wafted welcomes of angelic bands, 
As one of Christ's dear number upward siDrings, 
And first essays liis wondrous gift of wings. 
Sucli greetings did your recent coming wait, 

aged pilgrim I* at the heavenly gate, 
When man's allotted years on earth now spent. 
You, dying, " to the greater number went."t 
"What though your body moulders 'neath the sod, 
Its untouched life is hid with Christ in God. 

1 heard a voice proclaiming from the skies : 

'* The dead shall live, with my dead body rise." 
Awake and slug, O ye that dwell in dust, 
Because He lives, who is your life, ye must. 
His quickening spirit shall go forth again, 
His power o'ershadow and His love imj^regn. 
The slumbering germs dispersed through land and sea, 
The buried ovules of identity, 

* Dr. L. A. Smith. 

t Abiit ad plures. If this phrase was an apt and expressive equiva- 
lent for death 2,000 years ago, how much more now. 



THE MICROCOSM. 91 

Shall suddenly unfold, and all the Earth 
Be as a "vvomau in the pangs of bu-th. 
The Body born not mortal like that sown, 
But kindred and resemblant to Christ's own : 
Admiring angels shall the sight applaud. 
Blazing with all the majesty of God. 



C 32 89 



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